Celebration and Despair

At a personal level I have got much to celebrate, I have been selected as the Green Party candidate for Invercargill and I have had a steady stream of support for our local campaign. A number of people who I haven't heard from since the last election have been getting in contact and are offering their services again. We also have a wonderful French wwoofer who has brought order back to my wild and neglected vege garden and I have been enjoying delicious cooking smells as she prepares this evening's meal.

The despair comes from a series of recent news items that epitomises this John Key led government's approach to governance.

1) Oil exploration consents will be non notifiable, which means that the public will have no involvement in the approval process. While the consents will be considered under "discretionary" activity rather than "permitted" the Environmental Protection Agency will now be the sole environmental watchdog for future consents. While the government claims that environmental controls over oil and gas exploration are much stronger than under previous governments we also need to consider the fact that we have never had drilling in our waters at such great depths before. Taranaki drilling occurs at a depth of 100 meters while the drilling in the Great South Basin will be at a depth of 1,500 metres or over. The EPA hardly provided much reassurance recently (regarding due diligence) when they signed off Anadarko's response plan by only looking at the summary.

The preferential support and subsidies that the oil industry gets from the New Zealand government are extraordinary. They introduced a bill in December that extends the tax exemption for non-resident oil rig and seismic vessel operators (worth around $5 million a year) and have provided them with $25 million worth of free seismic surveys.

Combine all of the above with the legislation to limit protests at sea and we have high levels of corporate welfare and heavy handed limits to democratic process.

2) Pike River is continuing to cause grief for the families of the deceased miners. It is fairly clear from a recently revealed letter from Whittall's lawyer that he was able to buy his way out of a conviction. Anyone who has read Rebecca Macfie's thoroughly researched book on the disaster will know that it was Whittall's leadership that was the constant thread throughout the development of this highly flawed mine. To claim that it would have been difficult to achieve a conviction against Whittall defies belief and even if a few of the 25 charges were made to stick it would have brought some sense of closure for the families. I'm sure that the $100,000 or so that each family would have received from the $3.4 million that was offered would have been given up if the main person responsible had been convicted for his part in the deaths.

It is clear with this Government that those in CEO roles should have greater advantages and protections than ordinary citizens, especially as regards the fossil fuel industry. While Don Elder was not immediately responsible for the deaths of many miners, his inept management of Solid Energy saw many mining families seriously affected when mines were closed and jobs lost with little warning. Elder received no disciplinary action for the $400,000 million debt incurred from the company's collapse and instead he was allowed to go on gardening leave while still receiving his $1.3 million salary.

3) New Zealand's involvement in the Five Eyes surveillance alliance has been under scrutiny since it was revealed that it had been spying illegally against Kim Dotcom and number of other New Zealand citizens. Again there appears to be little that we can do to ensure the agency operates transparently and within the law, we have assurances that this has to occur but no way of knowing if it really will. There is also the very real concern that US influence may be over-riding the sovereignty we should have over our own spies, especially if the GCSB refuse to divulge whether they receive funding from the NSA, (like occurred with the British spy agency). Not only can't our spies accurately report details that involve single digits, but yet another Edward Snowden leak revealed that our spies have been trained in a variety of dirty tricks to entrap targets.

At least the three protesters who damaged the Waihopai spy base in 2008 had their damages action dropped, we now know much more about the spy base activities and few people will see justice being served if the actioned had continued.

Viv, I guess people only really take an interest in an issue when it directly relates to them and we have been brought up to believe that the US is the world's policeman and protector of democracy and freedom.

While I agree that the operation of killer drones is shocking, I also feel that the continued existence of Guantanamo Bay http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-26395066 is equally concerning and the daily plight of the Palestinians is horrific as well (288 Palestinian children were killed and 1600 were injured by US supported Israeli forces in 2009).

Popular posts from this blog

The latest Unicef report has us languishing at the bottom of the developed world in relation to the health and welfare our children and youth. This report was based on the data our government collects and concerningly, with regards to child poverty, a ranking wasn't provided because of a refusal to follow standard practice (an admission of failure?). In many documented areas we are seriously neglecting our young people (ranking numbers are determined by the data provided from a maximum of 41 developed countries):Child Poverty (41/41?) I consider that we must be by far the worst in the developed world for child poverty when the Government refuses to use the same measures as other countries so that we can be ranked. Our Children's Commissioner and the Child Poverty Monitor currently state that 14% of our children suffer from material hardship. We have a much higher threshold to determine this and require 7 elements to recognise hardship, while most other countries use only two.…

Mark Richardson, a former New Zealand cricketer and media personality, has made a valuable contribution by asking the "frilly undie crowd" to "shut up listen" to his latest attempt at mansplaining motherhood and parenting.

Richardson acknowledged that it was hard work but had the view that it is simply a fact of life and what we have to do, but can't be considered a job.

I can understand his flawed reasoning that being a mum does not fit the normal definitions of a job: there is no formal employment process to take it on; no job description provided; no agreement to sign; no holidays or sick days provided and it certainly isn't automatically paid. However, by not viewing it as a job and a hugely valuable one at that, it has meant that it has little status or recognition. There is no training or qualifications needed to be a mother and it generally isn't considered useful to include on a CV under 'wor…

Given the city's relatively static population the National Government chose Invercargill as one of the cities to lead its state housing asset sell off in 2015. In the 1980s the region had over 800 state houses and after continuous divestment, the remaining 360 were to be sold to a private or NGO social housing provider. At that time only a handful of people in Invercargill were on Housin…